Clothing is one of the three basic necessities of human life and a means of personal expression. As such, clothing or garment manufacturing is one of the oldest and largest industries in the world. However, unlike other mass industries such as the automobile industry, the apparel industry is primarily supported by a manual production line. Currently a sewing machine uses what is known as a feed dog to move the fabric through the sewing head relying on the operator to maintain the fabric orientation and keep up with the feed rate, also operator controlled. Previous attempts at automated sewing used the sewing dogs on a standard sewing machine and had a robot perform exactly the operations a human user would perform.
The need for automation in garment manufacturing has been recognized by many since the early 1980s. During the 1980s, millions of dollars were spent on apparel industry research in the United States, Japan and industrialized Europe. For example, a joint $55 million program between the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) and industry, called the TRAAS program, was started in 1982. The ultimate goal of the program was to automate the garment manufacturing process from start, with a roll of fabric, to finish, with a complete, inspected garment. While the project claimed to be successful, and did demonstrate a method to produce tailored women's jackets, it failed to compete with traditional methodologies.
Draper Laboratories in the U.S. received with $25 million of support from the government and industry with the goal of automating parts of the sewing process, beginning with setting a sleeve into a coat and then moving to automated seaming. In Europe, the BRITE project put millions of dollars towards automated sewing. Neither program resulted in successfully automating the entire process, although some minor gains were made.
Desirable in the art is an improved automated sewing machine that would improve upon the conventional automated sewing designs.